Fufeng's largest breeding project halted, 260 mu of farmland left abandoned for three years with no one in charge

Report from our newspaper (Reporters Wang Baocun, Dong Yi) Three years ago, a pig breeding farm project covering 260 mu with an investment of 80 million yuan, billed as Shaanxi's largest, was established in Fufeng. Not long afterward, the project died halfway through construction.

260 mu of land left fallow for three years


In February 2009, in order to promote the transformation of traditional agriculture and animal husbandry toward modern animal husbandry, the Shaanxi Provincial Farm and Livestock Breeding Station cooperated with Fufeng County Dingxin Meat Products Co., Ltd. to develop a pig breeding project, planning to build a farm with an annual output of 100,000 pigs. According to relevant information, once completed, this project would have a pig inventory of 40,000 head and an annual output of 120,000 head, capable of meeting the pork demand of cafeterias at major universities in Xi'an.

Yesterday, reporters saw at the site that the farm was surrounded by fencing, with several rows of unfinished buildings inside exposing bare rebar; around them were piled large quantities of unused sand, gravel and lime; in the open areas of the farm, waist-high weeds rolled in the spring wind.

An elderly man surnamed Fu from Zuoli Village, Zhaogong Town, Fufeng County, said that in the past, the place where this farm was built was all fertile farmland used for cultivating wheat seed, but the breeding project stopped shortly after construction began, and now it has become a stretch of weeds. “The relevant departments cut the ribbon, clapped their hands and left. Why don't they inquire about this half-finished project!”

Project construction encounters difficulties

Guo Enchang, office director of the Shaanxi Farm and Livestock Breeding Farm, told reporters that in early 2009, they reached an agreement with Fufeng County Dingxin Meat Products Co., Ltd. to lease out the 260 mu of land they had used for breeding, with Fufeng County Dingxin Meat Products providing the funds to build a pig breeding base. At the time, the lease was for 15 years, with the lease price at 480 yuan per mu for the first two years, then 600 yuan per year for the next 5 years, and afterward to increase appropriately according to market changes.

But unexpectedly, the project ran into funding problems in less than a year and stopped by May 2010. “Until now, not only have we not received a single cent in rent, but many people who worked at the construction site have not even received their wages.”

When such a major project encountered problems and was about to die, what assistance and coordination work did the government do? Reporters went to the Fufeng County Government Office multiple times seeking answers, but were each time put off on the grounds that the leaders were not in. Interview text messages sent to relevant county leaders also never received a reply.

Project land use procedures incomplete

Compared with the indifferent attitude of the relevant departments who ignored the problems that arose during the project's construction, at the beginning of this project's construction, when the land use procedures were incomplete, the relevant departments instead gave it the green light all the way, with very high efficiency. The 260 mu of land occupied by this project was breeding land of the Shaanxi Provincial Farm and Livestock Breeding Station, which had always been regarded as a base for cultivating fine wheat seed. The state has strict requirements for livestock land use, and should “adhere to the principle of encouraging the use of abandoned land and unused land such as barren hills and slopes, occupying as little cultivated land as possible or none at all, and prohibit the occupation of basic farmland.” Yet this fertile farmland used for breeding was used to build a pig farm, which is obviously inconsistent with relevant policies. Jia Changshu, head of the Land Law Enforcement and Supervision Brigade of the Fufeng County Land and Resources Bureau, told reporters that the Shaanxi Provincial Farm and Livestock Breeding Station is a unit directly under the Provincial Department of Agriculture and is not within the scope of Fufeng County's land jurisdiction, so they only have land supervision responsibility. In 2010, they also discovered that 13 mu of land in this farm project was being used to build office buildings and a living area, and immediately stopped and penalized them. As for the act of occupying fertile farmland for project construction, before they could intervene and investigate, the project had already stopped, so there was no time to impose a penalty.